Il fenomeno insediativo indigeno in età protostorica e il “caso Agrigento”: una proposta di rilettura delle dinamiche del popolamento nella Sicilia centromeridionale tra IX e VI sec. a.C.

Abstract

There is extensive archaeological documentation of indigenous and Greek frequentation of Agrigento
in the centuries preceding the foundation of 581/0 BC. The reading of this data gave rise to a reflection on the context
in which the Geloan colonial enterprise took place in the first quarter of the 6th century. BC. Traditionally the ktisis
was considered as the final stage of an expansionist march begun in the second half of the previous century by the
motherland. The archaeological data documents a much more complex picture which sees Agrigento as a theater of
interactions, contacts and exchanges between Greeks and indigenous people already two centuries before 581/0 BC.
The dissonance between this scenario and the one according to which in pre-colonial times the indigenous would have
opted for the entrenchment on naturally defended hills in the hinterland has imposed a re-reading of the settlement
dynamics in the territory between the Salso and Platani rivers, natural borders of the future Agrigento chora . It was
thus revealed that starting from the 9th century. B.C. a settlement system of indigenous origin has been structuring in
the Agrigento area, in close relation to the main waterways, which were navigable in ancient times and, therefore, preferential
communication routes between the hinterland and the coast. Such a scenario must be read as a reflection of a
complex and articulated reality, made up of exchanges and contacts, also documented by archaeological data, which not
only translated into a progressive demographic expansion, demonstrated by the uninterrupted growth of the settlement
fabric which unfolded for over three centuries, also, and above all, in an economic prosperity whose causes cannot be
sought exclusively in the exploitation of the territory’s resources but also in that system of interactions between indigenous
people and Greeks which must have had Agrigento itself as its theater.

Keywords: Agrigento, protohistory, acculturation, Salso, Platani.